Canis Major's neighborhood

Last night was good viewing, but tonight was fabulous! Not a cloud, nor a whiff of wind, a cool 50°F, low 40% humidity, no moon, what more could I ask? I even heard some coyotes at one point. Canis Major was low in the south with Leo starting to rise in the east so I decided to try for some of my missing Messiers in the CMa neighborhood: M41, 93, 47, 46, 50, and 48. I started about 8:52 with M41. It was easily found with my 7x50 binos with α and β CMa in the FOV. With the 8" dob M41 looks like a four legged starfish, very large. M46 and M47 were about 2x the distance between α and β CMa with M47 the brighter of the two. It looked a bit like a golfer teeing off while M46 looked like a dim spider. Both filled the 27mm ep FOV. Both were easy to find in binocs. M50 was a bit harder to spot. It looked a bit like a butterfly with two bright stars off the left wing and a bit of nebulosity off the right. Binocs showed a lot of nebulosity in this region of the milky way. Worth revisiting. At 9:34 a satellite passed just below 11 and 12 Puppis, through NGC 2482 going roughly east to west. 2482 is a loose cluster with an interesting linear string of 5 or 6 dim stars. Any of these open clusters would be interesting to try to sketch, possibly using my ETX70. M93 looked like a small, tight, bishop's hat or a v-shape. M48 is HUGE, almost 1° and filling my 27mm ep FOV. It forms a triangle with the 1,2 Hydra triple, and the ζ, 27, 28 Monoceros triangle. It's almost visible unaided and was easily found with my 7x50's.
My observing strategy of using binocs, pocket field guide, sticky notes to mark pages and object location, and a small hand lens so I can read the field guide under red light seemed to work well. The FOV of the hand lens matches my binocs fairly well. I placed a sticky note with an arrow marking the approximate location of the object I was looking for so it was easier to find in the dark. I was able to match the star fields seen in either my binocs or 9x50 finder with the magnified section of the field guide chart pretty well with a lot less fumbling around as usual.
I need to try using the field guide with my ETX70 sometime soon. I suspect it will make a good companion for use on the road this summer.
I got cold and decided to quit about 9:53 but not until after I took a quick peek at saturn, just under Leo, high in the east. The rings were clearly visible and I believe I even saw a moon or two.